NEW YORK -- The Israeli-born violin master Itzhak Perlman first came to the attention of the American public when he played on the The Ed Sullivan Show at the age of 13. But Perlman was never, he insists, a child prodigy.

"I was talented," Perlman allows. But "when I played you could actually tell that it was a young person playing. A prodigy is if you close your eyes and somebody's 10 years old, and you think its a 25-year-old person playing. That was not the case with me. I was age-appropriate for someone with talent."

Perlman, who just released a new album -- Fauré & Strauss Violin Sonatas, which pairs him with pianist Emanuel Ax -- spends his summers teaching 12- to 18-year-olds as part of the Perlman Music Program he and his wife, Toby, established more than 20 years ago. He sees children younger than that, whose "talent is so outrageously amazing," but observes, "That sometimes is a worrisome situation. Because you say, well, will this child, girl or boy, survive their gift?"

As Perlman, also a conductor, turns 70 -- his birthday is Aug. 31 -- his own gifts are prominently on view. March saw the release of Itzhak Perlman: Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, a 25-CD set that showcases his classical repertoire with tracks recorded between 1968 and 2001. Another set, the 77-CD The Complete Warner Recordings, featuring 59 albums, is due Sept. 25 and will be available for download on iTunes Friday.

Chatting in a dressing room at Madison Square Garden, shortly before joining Billy Joel on stage for one of Joel's regular gigs at the venue, Perlman is jovial and seems vigorous. Disabled by polio in early childhood, he zips around on a scooter, and notes that his physical limitations are "only an issue in travel. Then again, travel is difficult for everyone. I always say it would be great for it to be like Star Trek, where you go into a cube and they push a button and instantly transport you somewhere else."

Age, Perlman insists, is of relatively little concern. "I know some artists, whose names I will not mention, who have been celebrating an important birthday for two or three years."

Discussing his new album with Ax, Perlman says, "Manny and I have been friends for quite a few years," and performed together on stage. And the works chosen -- Gabriel Fauré's Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Major and Richard Strauss's Violin Sonata in E. Flat Major -- had never been recorded by Perlman previously.

"I always like to compare violinists to pianists as far as repertoire is concerned," Perlman says. "For pianists, the repertoire is endless. Violinists are more limited. We have a few concertos that are like bread and butter: Beethoven and Brahms and Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn and a couple of Mozarts and some Bach...The Fauré and Strauss are great, great works, but you have to get record companies to know what it is -- which is the most glorious music."

The joy of playing the bread-and-butter pieces, which Perlman is asked to do much more frequently, lies in constantly rediscovering them as he gets older. "I listen better now," he says. "I can hear the pieces and appreciate their beauty more, and as a result I play them a little differently."

He muses, "If you're a golfer, you have to be reliable, but you cannot do that as a musician...The challenge, as I tell my students, is not in how you play something the first time. What about the 10th, or the 50th, or the 150th? Am I going to play something the way I did last time? Maybe yes, maybe no, but the point is never to go on automatic."